VP Elect: Hannah Dormido

I am Hannah Dormido, a Graphics Reporter and Cartographer at the Washington Post. Before this, I worked at Bloomberg News and the Financial Times. I grew up in a small city in the Philippines, but I’m currently based in Washington, D.C.

As a board member, I serve on the Communications and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committees. NACIS (and FOSS4G Oceania) helped build my confidence as a mapmaker despite not having a cartography-adjacent degree – and I want to pay it forward. I recognize though that my experience is not universal. It can be intimidating to join societies, including ours, no matter how we always try to live by “NACIS is nicest.”

If I become the VP-Elect, I will lead with kindness and compassion. Our Society is rich with history, knowledge, and influence which we can leverage to make the world better by empowering our own. I will continue working on DEI and on initiatives to recognize individual and collective greatness, while elevating those who need it.

I dream of a NACIS that sets the standard for the mapping industry of how we build each other up, making the cartography sphere (even the world) a kinder, better, ‘mappier’ place.

Treasurer: Neil Allen

Neil graduated from the University of Kansas and moved to Oregon to become a cartographer with Allan Cartography and eventually Benchmark Maps. He has facilitated the publishing of hundreds of maps in the recreation/wall markets. He joined NACIS back in 2001 where he quickly engaged with the society and board. He was president in 2012 orchestrating the conference in Portland, Oregon. He looks forward to continued service to NACIS.

Board at Large

Sarah Bell

This year marks my ninth consecutive year as a NACIS member, and as a NACIS presenter and attendee. With 15 years into my cartography journey, NACIS has been an integral part of my growth, and the vitality of the cartography community that I cherish. For this reason, I am asking for your vote for me to serve on the NACIS Board.

My dedication to NACIS goes beyond membership and presentations. I have served 2.5 years for the NACIS journal, Cartographic Perspectives, as editor of Practical Cartographer’s Corner. I also helped co-organized NACIS Carto Camp workshop, sharing handmade mapmaking skills with participants. I continue to produce free mapmaking tutorials and cartographic assets as a small way of giving back to the community.

I share a vision for inclusive cartography when regularly guest lecturing for university classes across the country. My cartography philosophy is that mapmaking is a conversation about space, and every human is impacted by the stories that maps can perpetuate. Therefore, I actively encourage others to participate in the cartographic conversation either by making maps or by critically reading maps’ stories. It would be an honor to serve on the NACIS Board.

Jennifer Bernstein

I am honored to be nominated for a position as a NACIS Board Member. I am a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California and the Editor-in-Chief of Case Studies in the Environment. My first book is Responsible Consumption and Production: A Revolutionary Challenge for the 21st Century and I am currently working on my second.

I formerly was an Information Designer at American Environics, which later morphed into the Breakthrough Institute. While teaching full-time at USC, I got to completely redesign our graduate-level Cartography course and mentored a group of students who wanted to advance their knowledge of cartography. Currently I am developing an intermediate lesson of the Hour of CyberInfrastructure on science communication. I have experience chairing and serving on boards, such as co-chair of the UCGIS Communications Committee and co-Chair of the AESS Awards Committee. I was awarded a Mentoring award while at USC and I would like to support the NACIS community in the same way. 

Given the current intersection between misinformation and data availability, good cartography could not be more important. Were I elected, I would enthusiastically contribute my knowledge, experience, compassion, and “dad jokes” to the NACIS community.

Harrison Cole

I have been a NACIS member since 2017, and I am currently a Postdoctoral Scholar of Community Cartography, as well as Director of the GeoGraphics Laboratory at Penn State. The name of this lab may not sound familiar– that’s because my current primary objective is to create it. I am currently in the process of (re)establishing a cartography production and research lab at the PSU Department of Geography, offering mapping services and resources to students as well as the larger Central Pennsylvania community and beyond. On my own time, I have produced cartographic work for both scientific and public audiences, having published maps in books, magazines, blogs, and academic journals. I conducted my dissertation research under the guidance of Anthony Robinson, wherein I investigated the design of tactile maps for blind and low vision users. As a NACIS board member, a major project that I would be interested in pursuing is extending this type of work to organizational initiatives, specifically: cartographic outreach and collaboration with people who have disabilities (visual as well as auditory, mobility, neurological and so on), including both children and adults. NACIS has been an indispensable source of camaraderie and good fortune in my life, so it would be an immense honor to give back to this community.

Nathaniel Douglass

On the NACIS board, I hope to engage with other members in initiatives that help to continue fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment at our annual conferences. Ensuring that travel grants are accessible is something I feel strongly about maintaining so that students and eager young professionals may connect, knowledge share, and learn alongside our amazing member base. I hope to help contribute to coordinating our student map competitions to ensure they are smooth and rewarding. I have attended the last 7 NACIS conferences and have volunteered throughout the years by speaking and moderating during sessions.

I have experience with annual event coordinating and I’ve been an instructor for a handful of university GIS and cartography courses. This experience has helped me cultivate my communication and planning abilities with others. Given my experience with NACIS conferences over the years, I’m confident in my understanding of how the organization runs and can be of help in any capacity. Being a recent graduate of the University of Oregon, I have a desire to make cartographic knowledge sharing and education accessible for anyone looking to better their skills and learn from their peers.

Alex Fries

I’m Alex Fries, and I’m a cartographer at the U.S. National Park Service. Though I am a relative newcomer to NACIS, the warmth and hospitality this organization has shown me since I first joined in 2018 has meant that I have been given many opportunities to give back to the community by volunteering in several NACIS activities. For example, I have been heavily involved with efforts to overhaul the NACIS-sponsored Natural Earth dataset over the past two years, and in that time I have also been a NACIS conference session moderator (in 2020) and have served as NACIS’s social media coordinator on Twitter (since 2021).  

My nomination for this year’s board election came as both a great shock and a tremendous honor. If elected, I would be interested in using new and existing initiatives to further expand NACIS’s educational outreach efforts, particularly aiming at students in high school and undergraduate levels, using tools such as scholarships, seminars, and even social media to showcase cartography as a necessary and viable career option to the next generations of mapmakers. I would also be interested in joining the ongoing efforts to encourage further outreach with and participation from our colleagues in Latin America.

Bill Limpisathian

I hope to continue my dedicated service to the NACIS community if elected. I particularly hope to help see through continued efforts to make NACIS a more diverse and welcoming community for all. During my previous time on the Board as Student Director-at-Large, I helped organize our first virtual conference in 2020 – implementing our all-digital conference engagement and communication strategy. More importantly, I helped formalize the org’s commitment to diversity and inclusion by taking the lead in authoring our first-ever organization diversity and inclusion statement. After my Board term ended, I reaffirmed my dedication to NACIS by continuing to help with coordinating conference engagement and communications for the 2021 hybrid conference both online and on the ground in Oklahoma City. I remain ever committed to supporting the NACIS community.

Dylan Moriarty

Howdy folks! I’m Dylan Moriarty, news graphics and delightful cartographer. This upcoming year will be my 9th consecutive NACIS! I’ve helped out in small ways logistically previously, but I’d love to help out more.

First and foremost I’d love to bring a continuation of what makes NACIS so dang fun – namely the spirit of going above and beyond for students and young professionals. Helping connect them with people doing work they aspire to do, tools they want to learn, or just cheerleading that, hey, you too can do a talk and it’ll be great.

I’ve had a peak into the stress and work that goes into conference planning. In 16′ and 17′, I was the webmaster (shame that term got abandoned) for State of the Map and the 125th anniversary for The Daily Cardinal. Working both included being a part of the logistics discussions, seeing the headaches and eventual-well-deserved victories from those. For NACIS I’ve previously stuck to more light touch assistance, organizing introduction nights and most recently being one of the ‘New Attendee Ambassadors‘. Would dig and be honored to go deeper into those waters.

I wholly support the ongoing efforts to increase the conference’s diversity and inclusion. NACIS is only nicest if we keep striving to make it so.

Finally, I’d love to do more community outreach. There’s been some great successes with this in the past. Having 300+ cartographers all in one location is a heckuva thing! Seeing what partnerships could occur between this mass of geography wizards and any number of local charities or organizations would be a blast.

-Dylan M.

P.S.Would also bring a knowledge and love of cheeses.

Rebecca Ramsey

Greetings NACIS! Last year I attended OKC in-person, starting the meeting off by inviting myself to Tuesday night’s Board meeting. The NACIS folks were so encouraging/supportive that I volunteered to present a talk the night before a session, volunteered to author a review of a book for Cartographic Perspectives, and offered myself to the mercy of the crowd at Geodweeb Geopardy and reached out to volunteer for 2022’s conference. 

If elected I’d attempt to launch the following:

DEI

• Collaborate with members to catalog a NACIS “Syllabus” to aid in the searching of youtube videos from NACIS Youtube channel. 
• Continue discussing the experience of diverse cartographers by swapping from an vulnerable panel presentation style to series of invited diverse speakers willing to present about their paths to GIS.

Communication/Social Outreach

• Mentorship program pairing seasoned cartographers with students/young professionals to virtually meet on their own time throughout the year using a mentoring structure provided
  • I’ve participated in mentorships programs the last 3 years as a mentee (twice) and mentor (twice) at UKY
• Digital Member map (privacy in mind) allowing members to reachout to mappers in their area to aid in the continuation of smaller meetups outside of the annual meeting.
  • Graduated with a MS in Digital Mapping + New Maps Plus from UKY (portfolio)
  • Co-chaired the inaugural promotions committee for Horsey Hundred Cycling 2015 event in Georgetown KY

Annual Meeting 

• “Speed Dating Coffee with a Cartographer” session to help young professionals grow their network and encourage communication outside of the meeting.

* applicable experience in italics

Josh Ryan

My name is Josh Ryan and I currently work for the San Antonio Spurs basketball team, doing Frontend Development and Spatial Analysis. Previously I worked for Axis Maps doing Interactive Cartography. I am a current Editor for the Atlas of Design and last year was a Newcomer Attendee Ambassador for the NACIS conference in OKC. My Master’s degree is in GIS from Penn State.

I bring extensive website experience (both in design and code) and editorial experience (in managing, designing, and curation of publications). Additionally, since I am not currently in a traditional cartographic field, I bring an outsider’s viewpoint that would be beneficial to NACIS. My goal as part of the Board would be to streamline some of the backend processes to make it easier for NACIS members to contribute to the organization.

Student Board Member: Chelsea Nestel

Hi, my name is Chelsea Nestel. As the NACIS student board member, I will continue NACIS’ efforts to be more welcoming and inclusive through outreach to folks who might not yet think of themselves as cartographers. Building on prior conversations around youth outreach, I will establish a NACIS committee on youth engagement tasked with developing a young cartographers’ initiative, including lesson plans and resources to bring cartography to the next generation of cartographers. I bring to this role thirteen semesters of welcoming students to cartography, a year and a half of developing a K-8 cartography curriculum with education experts at the UW-Madison Center for Teaching, Learning and Mentoring, and my own experience parenting a young map lover. I truly believe everyone has something valuable to bring to our Society, and I am thrilled to serve as the incoming NACIS student board member.